My paintings function in a slightly unusual way; rather than aiming to create some amazing new visual phenomenon, they aim to reiterate as many old, hackneyed ones as possible, to the point of absurdity. The reason for this is my interest in the zone which exists between the way we imagine things are, and the way things actually are. In this zone, imperceptible but vast, we can find the building blocks of the familiar imagined or “processed” world: endless pop-culture icons, childishly simplified categories or expectations, formulaic narrativeï. One reason this is important is that nearly any failure to communicate, comprehend, or connect is attributable to the flawed logic of that zone�. In my paintings, those failures are made the focus: incompatible levels of representation collide in ridiculous ways, and guilt, shame, paranoia, fear, and violence ensue. But in the end, none of it is outlandish. It’s very close to home, familiar, and often unexpectedly humorous. If we can’t stop fictionalizing in this way, we should at least be able to laugh about it.